Forty Years’ War: A Place Where Cancer is the Norm
It’s Sunday and a beautiful day outside and I don’t want to be writing about cancer just now. I’d rather be on the beach in Galveston, but now that I’ve taken to packing parachutes for men who may come along and read our newsletters and our web site, I feel I must share a very moving article with you that I just read about M.D. Anderson. It speaks volumes of what one goes through with have cancer.If you’re a patient you have first hand experience with cancer, but as prostate cancer patients you are relatively isolated and in a great environment. Unscathed by evidence of the surgeries and the type of treatment that has to go on at the main center with as the author describes with it’s own sights and smells. With the exception of the children who we share the lobby with, we’re not among serious cases and there’s still much hope.But we all know how being with the children and young adolescents we might feel like the author did, “I can’t look at them”. We put up a good front because we know they are having access to the best care in the world but you know their lives will be shortened and probably certainly more pain and treatments will follow.Please read “Forty Years’ Ware: A Place Where Cancer is the Norm”. Forty Years’ War a PDF version .The link to the NYTimes
Dr. Nicola AllyAs a radiation oncologist, I counsel many men with prostate cancer (PCA) about treatment options. After skin cancer, PCA is the most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death in American men. 
“Hope you find my humor ok. Joe
It’s official - On May 22 the Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) parent organization, Health Care Servive Corporation for these four states Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Illinois called Dr. Lee, the director of the Proton Therapy Center to let him know they would continue to cover proton therapy for prostate cancer in Texas. Also Bob Marckini confirmed that this applies to the other states as well and they did not put the proposed policy in place. In fact it’s been removed from the BCBS web-site.Thanks to everyone who either wrote or called into to the BCBS headquarters and Dr. Lee thanks us for all the help. Your efforts along with a mighty push from the leaders at the Proton Center and centers, helped stave off this second major move to cut the reimbursement for early prostate cancer treatments at proton centers. The first was Medicare’s move last September when the Centers for Medicare Medicaid Services collected comments about the treatmentThis is huge and if BCBS had gone ahead, then all the other private carriers would have gone along; paving the way for Medicare and the current administration to cut.Our next campaign should be to educate and influence the law makers and analysts who are drafting the new heath care plan in Washington. The only problem is that effort is moving very fast and not much information is available to study about their approach.Thanks to Luke Mizell who wrote to the Blue Cross Blue Shield executive. This is the letter he received in response.
